Cool News: Raising Body Temperature Can Relieve Depression

Apparently, depressed patients have higher body temperatures. So increasing their temp even more so that the body’s cooling mechanism kicks in and cools the body and brain is a good thing. It alleviates depression for up to 6 weeks. Ok.

http://bipolarnews.org/?p=3660&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterRaising body temperature by a few degrees may produce antidepressant effects as the body’s cooling mechanisms kick in. At the US Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress in 2015, researcher Charles Raison described a study comparing the effects of exposing participants to a special heating coil in a tent that retained the heat until their body temperatures increased by a few degrees to those of a sham procedure that did not raise body temperature. Those participants whose body temperature was increased had a lower body temperature the following day, and their depression improved as their bodies cooled. These improvements lasted six weeks or more.
Depressed patients tend to have elevated body temperatures. Raison suggests that raising body temperatures even more prompts the body’s cooling mechanisms to compensate, bringing cooling activity to normal levels from the skin to the brain and improving depression.

I used to get better results with hot yoga than with regular yoga, probably for that reason. Lately I’ve been finding those long sessions too hard, so I haven’t practiced, but it makes intuitive sense to me that heat would help. Also I tend to experience more hypomania in the summer months.